Of Hair Gel
by thestairwell
Summary: A drabble exploring why Blaine wears so much hair gel. Basically, musings plus a little headcanon.


**Rating:** T, for the mention of a blowjob  
**Warnings:** None.  
**Summary:** A drabble exploring why Blaine wears so much hair gel.

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It was one of those things people noticed without really noticing.

First was Kurt, who realised it was gradually getting harder to run his fingers through Blaine's hair when they kissed. When they'd first started dating (or at least after Kurt worked up the courage to do more than rest his hand on Blaine's cheek or neck) there would be a bit of residue left on his fingers, which mildly grossed him out, but by their first Christmas _together_, he could only bury his fingers into the short hairs on the nape of Blaine's neck. He'd commented on it - just a sleepy complaint about nothing to hold onto after a truly spectacular blowjob. Blaine had shrugged, and then generally washed the gel out before they did anything.

Second was Blaine himself. He was needing to buy a new tub every other week, although he only realised after Kurt brought it up. He studied his hair in the mirror - was he perhaps using too much? No, it looked fine. In fact, Blaine thought he looked even more the gentleman than he had in his Dalton uniform. So he moved on and settled for buying slightly cheaper gel to compensate.

Third was - to everyone's surprise, had he voiced the thought - Cooper. He'd fancied himself a pretty brilliant big brother until Blaine's outburst, so yeah he'd perhaps dropped the ball somewhere, but he hadn't seen Blaine since before he met Kurt. (Wow, he really had dropped the ball, hadn't he?) Cooper noticed his brother's clothes were a little more nerd chic, layered vests and shirts and sweaters, copious amounts of bow ties. He reckoned the new hair style was perhaps a throwback to the days before Dalton when his hair hadn't been as curly, or maybe it suited his outfits better. But whatever, he was more concerned about having a friendship with his brother than thinking about his hair.

Had anyone given a second thought, they would only have stayed on the surface to perhaps tease Blaine of his dependency on the gel.

Had anyone given a (perhaps overly) deep thought, they might have come up with any number of subconscious reasons.

Blaine's hair had not always been curly: when he was a young boy, it was only wavy, and it had only got curlier as he got older. By the time he got to high school (and this was the public school then), he'd got into the habit of gelling it down because his friends made fun of it all the time. (This was, of course, before he came out; afterwards, their teasing grew mocking, and they twisted pencils in his hair on the days he somehow ran out of gel.) Blaine didn't really remember this by the time Kurt came along - he'd blocked it out of his memory - but the sensation of brushing out the knots would linger at the back of his mind until he was a few years out of college.

One might also think that he might have been compensating for his lack of uniform. Blaine had always prided himself on being a gentleman - an effect of obsessing over Disney Princes - and he liked to dress smartly in shirts and vests to properly portray that image. Going to Dalton, he was able to truly look the part in a blazer, dress shoes and pressed trousers. After his transfer to McKinley, he couldn't keep the uniform, but he could keep the gel.

There might also have been the appearance of strength and maturity. When he slicked back his hair at eight, his mother often cooed that he looked so grown up (mostly, this was just at business parties, but that is neither here nor there). He applied the same logic as he got older, that the gel made him look grown up. He was in reality a bumbling teenager, but at least maybe he could look like he knew what he was doing. This had, admittedly, completely backfired when Kurt had believed just that, and so the mess of Valentine's Day and Rachel's party had happened, but then Kurt had known the truth and only loved Blaine more.

Had anyone looked beyond the surface, they would perhaps have realised that only a small handful of people had ever seen (a sober) Blaine with his natural curls: there was, first and foremost, and most important of all, Kurt, who took Blaine for himself and only tried to change his moisturising habits (this would be something Blaine resisted until they were living together after college); there were Cooper and their parents, if they ever poked their heads into his room after his shower but before he turned his lights out (they never did); and there were, increasingly, the Hummel-Hudsons, because unlike at his own house no one really cared what he looks like in the mornings (although he did try and avoid looking like he's just had sex with Kurt, because Burt would probably have minded that).

But no one ever gave a second thought, and if they had, well, it doesn't really matter anyway.

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**End notes:** I am really, really fed up of reading fanfiction where Kurt tries to convince Blaine to let the curls loose, or where Blaine gives up on the gel the second he's done with high school. Blaine styles his hair like that because he likes it and it looks good - why would Kurt change that? (Hint: He wouldn't. Where's your canonical evidence?) I have similar irritated feelings over all the ragging on Blaine's clothes. Have a clue, fellow writers: STOP FORCING YOUR OWN FEELINGS AND OPINIONS ON THE CHARACTERS. Is it so hard? Yes, I do prefer Darren's curls - but Darren is not Blaine, and Blaine uses gel, and it is really not a defining characteristic.

(Side note: Without the gel, we wouldn't have had our Bike Chanderson conversation. And then where would we be? _Just think about that_.)

I'm not saying I'm right or anything. This drabble is me romanticising my headcanon a bit. I just wanted to rant a bit about author bleed in one of the worst ways possible. Because fanfiction is fanfiction, but it's not fun for anyone but yourself if you don't write the characters.


End file.
